RV Adventure: Searching for
Brown Mountain Lava

Brown Mountain is only 12 miles to the northeast of our resort and is second only to Mt. McLoughlin at 7,315 ft. elevation. Mt. McLoughlin is 9,495 ft. If you have not seen how Morgan and I use a GPS to guide our riding you should read her story of Finding Buck Prairie. You can see all the pink area of the map is lava which flowed from Brown Mountain not so many years ago. There are large areas which have no vegetation only large boulders of basalt. This is our first ride where we will be riding the whole time on single track. "Single track" is the mountain biker term for a trail just wide enough for one bicycle. A hiker will call this a trail. We found

That the trail was marked with a sign showing that bicycles, hikers and horses were equally welcome to use this trail.

You will see on the map at waypoint BM03 (also marked 005) the Brown Mountain Trail crosses the Pacific Crest Trail. The photo above shows this crossing. I'm standing on the Pacific Crest Trail shooting south. My bike and Morgan are resting on the Brown Mountain Trail. In the photo to the left I am shooting north on the Pacific Crest Trail. In the top left corner you see a piece of a sign tacked to a tree. When you swing your

pointer through the Pacific Crest Sign on the right, you will see a close up of what's left of the brown and red sign. Bicycles are not allowed on the Pacific Crest Trail. Since I am also a hiker, I approve of this rule. Horses and other pack animals are allowed on the Pacific Crest Trail. My thinking is that they do as much damage as bicycles but that is another discussion.

This was a very warm day and Morgan was in constant search for some place to

cool off and finally found a deep section of the South Fork of Little Butte Creek. The trail follows this creek about half of the length we traveled.

Our trail finally came close enough to a lava flow that we could photograph and climb on the basalt. It was not easy to climb on and very uncomfortable to sit on.

Our trip back to the truck was slightly downhill so faster traveling for me and Morgan was just a fast because she knew she was heading back to the creek where she could again cool off.